How it Started !!

People often ask me….what got you into breeding insects? From a young age I had a fascination with wildlife, especially reptiles and small insectivorous mammals. This curiosity led me to become a biologist, naturalist and a mammal researcher with a passion for keeping and breeding native wildlife. I started breeding crickets to reduce my expenses for wildlife rescue and reptile keeping. This led us to breed them commercially to pet stores, wildlife parks, zoos and the general public.

For example, one of my passions is rehabilitating injured or orphaned marsupial carnivores called Quolls (Australia’s native cat- see photo below). A good friend (Luke Jackson) and myself established the Far North Quoll Seekers Network (FNQSN) in northern Australia, to conserve quolls which are now in threat of extinction. Quolls have an insatiable appetite for live foods, with a single animal eating a container of crickets every second day. It quickly became apparent that keeping a family of Quolls over a period of many months was an expensive exercise.

As we found out first hand, conventional methods are laborious and too time consuming and messy to be practical for the average person. We had to develop simpler, faster and more cost effective methods if we were going to have the time to do our research, keep reptiles and do our wildlife rescue work. There had to be a better way….and so the fun began.

How our Low Maintenance Methods were Developed…

Every day for over 10 years we spend countless hours in the shed and garage experimenting and refining new techniques for all insect species. We hit highs and lows….at one point we nearly gave up as it seemed to be too much effort, and pests such as ants and vinegar flies were devastating the colonies...and continued to do so. I however am a stubborn person by nature and refused to be beaten by 2mm fly, and clumsy messy techniques. After all giving up rehabilitating quolls, or our field research was not an option.

So I continued, year after year… refining, experimenting and building the strangest contraptions. It is hard to believe (or admit), but I would lay awake at night, thinking of new ways to improve things. Then some 4 years later, a very strange thing happened. I went in the shed, and for the first time I didn’t have anything to build or experiment with….I simply walked out. I remember my wife commenting “you were quick today”. To which I replied “I think I worked it out”. To my great surprise and delight, the systems I had developed had slashed maintenance, eliminated offensive odor and greatly increased production. The work was not finished, we spend an additional 7 years refining the methods for all three species.

Which was fortunate as word had got out about the “insect man” and I had private and commercial customers lining up. We have sold countless feeder insects to wildlife parks, zoos, pet stores, wildlife rescue clubs, large scale reptile keepers and the general public.

We don’t think anyone should have to spend that much blood, sweat and tears just to feed their animals healthy fresh feeder insects. Nothing would make us happier than passing on our methods to you, so that you can follow you passion…just like we did.